Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is a social democratic and socialist political party in Iraqi Kurdistan that was founded on 22 May 1975 by Jalal Talabani, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Fuad Masum, Ali Askari, and Adel Murad. The group sought to bring democracy and peace to the Kurdish people, and it fought against the government of Ba'athist Iraq and the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party during the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War in the 1990s. However, the KDP and PUK would later form an alliance against the Islamic State, and the Peshmerga militia fought against IS.